DJ McAneny: Worth Mentioning has a new home & a new contest!

Worth Mentioning...is a weekly roundup by South Jersey Online's own DJ McAneny of all the things you should know about on the Web. News tips, comments, concerns, disagreements, love mail and hate mail greatly appreciated and accepted atsjnjog2@sjnewsco.comor by calling(856) 686-3661.

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Hey all! If you've found this, then that means you have discovered the new Voices page for the Gloucester County Times. This is where Worth Mentioning will live from now on, so be sure to bookmark this address now! This is where I will be spending my Fridays, hanging around and dishing out the goods - so this is where you need to come visit me from now on! Do it.

Now, as some of you may have noticed, there wasn't a Worth Mentioning last week. That's because I was running around like a mad man, in-and-out of meetings and training sessions and getting various new aspects of our site to drop for the general public. We've been working our rear-ends off trying to make this site better and more enjoyable for all of you to visit. So, that being said, it means we've got double the goodies for your perusal.

To celebrate our new digs, I shall be hosting the second contest in Worth Mentioning's history! Hooray for you! More on that later, though...

Allow us to begin yet another chapter together.

On with the show...

--------General News

— Someone with an awful lot of time and talent took all those different videos form Youtube about how to play various different instruments and spliced them all up together in one pretty awesome music video. He did it a bunch of times- and kindly made them all available for the general public to enjoy.

— Emma McLean decided to replace the bulbs at The Pub In The Square (nicknamed The Pits) in Buckie, Banffshire, in an attempt to ward off the dark and gloomy atmosphere stereotypical of small bars. So she replaced the blue strip bulbs behind the bar of the pub she managed – with high-powered ultraviolet tubes more commonly reserved for tanning salons. The lamps, which were only supposed to be used a few minutes at a time, left regulars and workers with sunburn and heatstroke - and a few trips to the emergency room. Now that's what I call "The Pits!" HEY-YO!

— So, you guys may or may not have heard (You've probably heard, I already mentioned it twice.) but I've got another contest for yooou! I felt bad for not being able to come see you guys last week, so you all deserve a treat anyway. Here's the deal: I'm about to give you a phrase. First three (3) people to email me the significance of the following phrase will win the prize of ME, DJ McAneny, at some point in the future we both mutually agree on, hand-delivering an autographed Sunday paper to your doorstep with coffee and donuts (or bagels, if you're not down on donuts) and, if you've got kids, maybe some goodies we've got lying around the office. Ok, so, here we go:

Good luck to everyone. And seriously, don't just run to Google. That's cheating. (Not really, since I had to use it, but try and think about it first BEFORE finally giving up and going to Google.)Here's my email again right here.

— What the heck

— PSA of the week: Don't learn to swim in Australia – unless you're absolutely positive you can out-swim a crocodile. That is all.

--------Science and Tech

— If anyone knows anything at all about me, they know what my two favorite things in the whole world are... Original Nintendo and Top 40 rap songs. Man, I love me some Top 40 rap songs while playing oldschool Nintendo. Well, some amazing genius over at ...shot then! went ahead and mashed them up together. So here, now, I include for you a treat as you finish perusing today's treasures. Ladies and Gentlemen, 8-bit Hip Hop medley. You can find the track list over at ...shot then for the songs that inspired the mix, but if you know anything about Top-40 hip hip, you know where these bad boys are coming from.

— Bad news, guys and gals. It has been announced that 22 is the peak age for reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought and that, at 27, it's all downhill from there, as our powers gradually begin to decline from that point. This information comes from a study of 2,000 healthy people over seven-years ranging in age from 18 to 60 and published in the Neurobiology of Aging journal. I only have two years left in my prime, and knowing that kind of stinks. Luckily, just being happy is good enough for me.

— Weird.

— If you happen to have an event coming up and you need something unique for a gift because you're mom said if you bought her one more copy of The Dark Knight for a gift-worthy holiday then she was going to disown you, check out The Sound Advice Project. They are bracelets that are made based on the wavelength structure of a given sentence. Now, the idea is based around keeping kids off drugs, like being able to give your son or daughter a bracelet that is actually the phrase "don't throw away all your potential on drugs," or something, but you can order up just about any phrase that fits inside of six seconds. So being able to give you're mom a bracelt that says "You're an awesome mother," or your girlfriend on that says "You are beautiful," is pretty neat, too.

— I don't know how technologically accepting the business world has become, so, use this next tool at your own discretion, lest you be considered completely lame and unprofessional. But hey, you could also be considered on the cutting edge of the green movement, so, it might not be a totally bad move. You'll have to decided for yourself. Anyway, You can set up an account at Contxts (like 'contacts + texts') and plug all your info into there. Then, next time you make a new professional connection, you say, "Oh, just text DJMcAneny to 50500," and boom, your electronic business card gets texted right to their phone. Regardless of how you use this, make sure your account name is something professional – like your name – and not your Myspace profile name GreenSnookumPantsLovesBigCantaloupes or the like.

— If you think the time-wasting games I give you are sometimes too juvenile, I won't argue. But chew on this: Don't Look Back. It's a game created around the concept of the death of Eurydice, wife of Orpheus. It is a tragic story from Greek mythology. And the game, though built around the pixelated throw-back concept of old Nintendo games (For which I have already professed my love) it is difficult as all get-out. So take a crack at something slightly deeper in meaning if you're feeling the need for a more intellectual outing.

Click on this to make it bigger and see it in fine detail.

— And now, back to the juvenile. This game is called The Mouse 101, and it tests five various abilities with a mouse through five different tests, including speed, accuracy, strength, consistency and movement. I've included my final chart for your review and attempt at beating. So have at it, and post how well you did in the comments.

— Here's a cool way to scan the news of some of the nation's top papers to see what headlines are running around the country and what is being considered important for the day.

— Finally, I found a new place to "get your read on" for free. Check it out and literate yourself over at Forgotten Books, who currently have over 1,736 books online.

BONUS TREAT: Because I didn't have time last week, I was left with an abundance of things to try and fit in this week. While I think I've weeded through the stories to bring you only the most spectacular, there were just a ton of videos I couldn't fit in else where above. So, for your viewing pleasure, I present all the videos I just couldn't leave out.

So, to recap:
Tires – +1
Rabbits – +1
Snakes – -1
Squirrels – -1/+1 = break even
Cats – -3 (they get an extra negative point because their were two cats in that video with the squirrel outside)